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E36 Geometry

Would one of you lovely amazing instructors or techs care to give me a good geometry setup for my 328? I've got gifted a set of HSD Monopro Coilovers with 16 way adjustablity including camber and caster and damper settings and height adjustability!

Yeah, I went on the track and I quite liked it looool I really under estimated it after like 10-15 laps of brand hatch really tiny circuit i was kinda worn out lol. Like you and Chris say.. the only things I'm used to is running stupid camber setups on very low slammed cars and going 160 down the motorway and all of that nonsense which got really boring now. But when I was on the track it felt like I had to put in much more effort in rather then keep the pedal to the metal

as an individual that spent a career in professional motorsports both winning my own championships and building cars that others won in, I can tell you directly that nothing you ever thought you learned driving on the street has anything to do with nor has any transferrable skills to the race track. certainly start working on your car. that's a lot of the fun but I suggest you spend a few bucks and attend one of those professional driving schools the tracks there offer. one that has good ex pros as instructors... guys that actually have done the work and know how to do it. the skillsets they will teach you will be invaluable to both going fast but also keeping your car alive during all this. making the car quick and good is easy. that's just money and hardware. learning to race on an actual race track is an entirely different thing. a galaxy different. the very very best students I ever had were women. they simply assumed they knew nothing, paid attention and did very well very quickly. the very worst students I ever had were wealthy lawyers and such with VERY fast and exotic street cars. it was almost impossible to teach them anything... until the housewives started beating them and being quicker... then things would change. its not a hard game to learn. what IS hard, especially for someone new at it is the amount of concentration , focus and discipline required every second of every lap.
its good fun... enjoy the ride. one other bit of advice. the better you make your car for the track, the worse it will become to drive on the street in an exponential fashion. I would recommend you get yourself a cheap beater and build yourself a trackday special... light, safe, with proper wheels , tires, brakes and cooling. it will be far cheaper to do that than it will be to keep fixing your daily driver.

I totally agree with you, before Chris, Shadowpuck and the rest of the great people told me the same before but I was stubborn and thought I'm gods gift to racing until a few weeks ago I tried to take a corner fast and hard and spun off the track lol then I was like errmmmm okay then. I have an instructor in mind! He's very good at what he does, he's a racer and tech. He's the one who's going to be building my car. I have a beater running on 3 cylinders at the moment and I'm going to make my 328 more track focused. Bruno (my tech and instructor) took me for a ride and I was gob smacked because I thought I knew it all until I realised I didn't know anything. I'm currently building my car back up again slowly one part at a time and I'm going to make sure I use top quality parts and do things the right way this time. I've got the suspension just need to know how to set them up.

Next I'm going to get Michelin PS 4's all around, then need to buy proper good rotors all around, then back to the engine work and cooling system. The current thought I have in my head is to bore my m52b28 to 86mm from 84mm to maintain the 3.0 displacement as the m54/s52 crank has a very long stroke and revs funny at top end and they notorious for breaking at extended high rpm use. I've went back to my original crank from the M52b28 but it's knife edged and going to be balanced when I get my UUC clutch kit. I don't know which clutch to use, the M5 or the performance organic or segmented Kevlar or the cerametallic. The whole rotating assembly is going to be balanced to in excess of 10k rpm

then for the head I will be having it ported and polished with oversized valves that would receive a multi angle valve job and a racing cutring headgasket, new valve stem seals, new bearings again, new lifters this time that would be solid, and upgrade from my S52 cams to 282/274 Cat Cams later on with ITB's, I'm running a Euro s50b32 exhaust system which would be Port matched with the head. I'm hoping to break the 300 bhp barrier. Forged high compression pistons at 12:5:1 CR running on Shell V Power. New Euro S50b32 cooling system, oil cooler and an LSD

its hard to get hold of an oem LSD. What do you guys think of KAAZ? Should I opt in for 1.5 way or 2 way?

ok... fair enough.... so several more pieces of advice.... if there is a choice, build short stroke/big bore motors. from a racing engine architecture standpoint, the physics say you will always be better off. two... buy good rods and good pistons the first time... carillo rods and cosworth pistons. spend your money on the bottom end... not on the cylinder head. three ... " porting and polishing " is mostly myth. certainly and without question... correct port size, shape and volume are crucial but what you ( perhaps) don't understand or know is that building a proper racing engine is a package deal. the correct compression ratio ffor the correct port size and flow characteristics for the correct cam for the correct primary lengths and diameters of the headers for the correct fuel and ignition curves. get any one of those wrong and the package will be , in a word, bad... and you won't know why. you don't need your power being made at 8500 rpm... you need your power to be between 5000 and 6500 without needing exotic fuels. . that means good compression ratio in the 10.5 to 11.5 range, good cams with good lift but moderate centerlines and relative small ports. you don't have to invent any of this. someone out there has already done it. what you want to be doing is turning laps... thousands of them... not trying to sort some high revving motor that makes all its power at 8k and keeps blowing up. KISS ... Keep It Simple, Stupid ... you need to learn how to drive and race... not how to put new bearings in in the dirt at the track. four... spend your money making the chassis bullet proof. a good well proven shock and spring package, a VERY good seat and belts and a good stiff professionally built cage. you have to get your head around where you are in this game and whats important which I suppose requires you to figure out what IS important for you... you aren't going to win any races by having a big motor. a guy with a better chassis that drives better will beat you like a rented dog every single day. so... that who you need to be right now... the guy with the better chassis and a bulletproof reliable package to learn for a while. big motors you can have anytime... all you have to do is write a check. you can't get skills by writing a check...

I fully agree with what you've written here, the Coilovers are one of the best and almost everyone in the UK swear by them, in regards to the motor your point is really valid, the guy who's building everything managed to get 210bhp out of a M44b19 with just headwork and a custom manifold, when he put in a set of big hairy cams he got 245 bhp out of it, in terms of building the head he's probably the best over this side of the pond and people swear by him. Only reason I'm building the motor now is because it has to be rebuilt anyways I won't be using any fancy fuels either just 98 octane shell V power pump gas, and yes I started off by just doing the motor with minor mods to the handling and my car drove like a death trap on budget tires which is why I've taken the time and effort out to tackle all corners of the triangle this time. For the price of this build I could bolt on a turbo and make 500 bhp but what use would that be to me other then straight line power?

id like to believe porting and polishing (if done correctly) makes a noticeable difference as Chris once said engines are a big air pump meaning more air in more air out means more power or something along those lines

I'll repeat the advice that has been directed in your direction many times and suggest to not worry about getting more power and modifying the car, rather get the car maintained and safe. Then put the funds you would have spent on an additional 15 hp or the greatest dampers into seat time and work on your driving skill. Your times and consistency will improve much more than you could expect from the power increase or most other mods.

head work is critical but , while this may be difficult to believe because of all the mythology and voodoo that surround it, the key to cylinderhead work is shape and flow... not size. in a normally aspirated motor what makes cylinder heads make power is intake velocity in the port. the instant you make a port even the tiniest bit too big , you kill the velocity and the power gets worse. I'm not talking about extremes here where, for instance on some American V8's the iron cylinderheads had ports the size of a quarter and all you did was bolt a set of big port heads on with a big 4barrel and make another 100 hp... I'm talking about well thought out and designed cylinderheads from the factory like the BMW has or the alfas or any number of well designed European cars. on those motors , like yours , once you start grinding on the cylinderhead you are making a dramatic difference in its flow characteristics... if you have made them big then you have mover the power band up in the rev range... how do you make power up there ? you increase the compression ratio. how do you make power with a higher compression ratio ? you put in bigger cams . how do you make power with bigger cams ? more fuel and bigger induction... etc etc... in race engine design, there is no single element that is the "magic bean" . everything has to work together. if I were designing your motor to do what you are talking about doing , I would leave the porting box stock, I would put the best rods and pistons I could afford in it , I would bump the compression ratio up to 10.5 or 11 :1 at the most I get a set of small primary, long tube headers , I would get a VERY mild set of cams with some extra lift but not much additional overlap and then I would go to the dyno and rechip the fuel and ignition curves to suit what I just did. that all might buy you 15 hp or so... but it will fatten up the midrange and give you a nice kick at about 500 more revs than you had before and last forever. once you decide to start screwing with the cylinderhead in any material sense, what you have when you are done absolutely defines every single other component that goes in the motor from that moment on. the mistake everyone makes is making huge ports. then they have to run 14 to 1 compression and cams that only make power at 9800 rpm and don't have enough torque to move off from a standing start. that may be good for lewis Hamilton but it is the worst mistake you could make. by the way... NEVER polish intake ports it cause the fuel to fall out of suspension... a good bead blasted final finish is best... polish the exhaust ports . that reduces the heat transfer into the head and increases the velocity out of the port... and buy yourself david vizards book or the one Robert yates wrote ... both wrote brilliant books on head design and porting and are really the gold standard for separating the mythology from what really works. building good racing engines is like any other engineering exercise. its isn't a one size fits all. it is what is specifically correct for exactly the conditions that they will be used for.

I'll repeat the advice that has been directed in your direction many times and suggest to not worry about getting more power and modifying the car, rather get the car maintained and safe. Then put the funds you would have spent on an additional 15 hp or the greatest dampers into seat time and work on your driving skill. Your times and consistency will improve much more than you could expect from the power increase or most other mods.

i understand what your saying but at the moment the car doesn't drive because of a blown motor, if I rebuild it stock then want the power later I'd be paying for the same job twice is what worries me. I thought maybe this way I'll get the motor and the safety and maintenance out of the way and avoid paying for the same job twice that way I can throw whatever money left and whatever money I make on lessons and seat time

thats not correct. you build the bottom end to tolerate 200 hp. forged billet rods, cosworth pistons , perfect clearences tri metal bearings ... all the best stuff. you can bolt a cylinder head on with monster cams any time and if you have to do a set of pistons at the same time to get your monster compression ratio then who cares ? it will need a rebuild by then anyway. you need to understand what you are building. if you build the big motor , it will need a rebuild pretty quick ANYWAY. if you build a hot mule then you will get longevity .
AND performance...

let me add something here... I spent a career in motorsports. I have made every mistake there is to make ... some more than once. and I am apparently thousands of miles away from where you are. I have nothing to sell you and I'm not trying to sell you anything. I am simply trying to get your enthusiasm and expectations under control and KEEP you from making those same mistakes. you don't have to believe me. but someday you will look back and remember this advice...